Question

I added the following command near the top of my shell script in order to record the script output to a file. This works with no problem when I run the script as my user, jsmith, however when the script is run as root in a crontab, I receive an error:

syntax error near unexpected token:

exec &> >(tee $LOG_PATH$TIMESTAMP.log)

I do have both $LOG_PATH and $TIMESTAMP correctly defined above the command as:

LOG_PATH="/home/jsmith/script/logs/"
TIMESTAMP="$(date -d "today" +"%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M")"

Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

Usually, Linux feature multiple shells (sh, csh, dash, bash, etc.) which have subtle syntax differences. It is possible that you tested your script with bash, whereas crontabs are executed with dash.

I suggest you the following:

1. check what shell your script requires (looks at the first line)
2. tell cron to use that shell, i.e., set SHELL=/bin/my_shell at the beginning of your crontab (see the manpage for details).